I spun into a fairy tale summer in which he was living near me and enjoying the beach he’d grown up blocks from and liking himself and making respectable friends who cared about him and putting my parent’s delicate minds at rest.  I flashed to teen me & twenty-something him going to smokey jazz clubs in the village and my jazz-phobic shell beginning to crack and to the years of ceremonial holiday meals where dad would be reading from the book or saying some prayer & he & i would slowly build into frenzied hysterics.  These kodak moments filled me for a minute and for the first time in years i was hopeful that he would get his life back.

I’m reading a lot about being a father, and about how boys are different from girls and am learning a lot...not just as it pertains to my young sons, but about myself.  My father.  His relationships to me & to my brother.  About what all boys need in order to have healthy emotional lives. About what goes wrong when they do not get it.  Something went terribly wrong here.

Mom is unquestionably the big one (cutting the cord and all) and I miss my dad like crazy.  But one expects that they will outlive their parents.  And one expects that they will grow older with their siblings.  I got ripped off.

He taught me how to play guitar and about the beatles & stones & beach boys & simon and garfunkle and about bach and boxing and side-kicks and aliens and civil rights and why-at all costs- I needed to stay away from cops.  He tried to teach me math way beyond my grasp and sat on me (literally) when I tried to run to mom.  “MOM….KIM’S TEACHING ME!”. 

He told me that god would punish me if I tell a lie.  Years later he told me there was no god.  He bragged about me and came high to my gigs and told me he loved ME more than anyone in the world.  I can’t see anyone ever telling me that again.

My poor, crazy, stubborn, gentle, brilliant, fucked up brother would have had another birthday today.  I’m glad he was my brother.  Just confused about the rest.

Kim Bennett Branitz 11/11/54-8/1/01 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgP0N4xIfPo

The second of the Twin Towers was nearly complete and I felt so special, in spite of the cramped space and the roaches to have such a view of the world’s tallest buildings. 

On the couch with my dad once, when looking at a magazine spread featuring impressive pictures of the buildings, he said “They shouldn’t have made them so tall…if they fall over they’re gonna fall on everything for a quarter mile in that direction.”.  And we both assumed, I assume, that we’d never live to see his theory tested.

On a school trip I remember a few things.  The giant Picasso in the lobby.  The elevator ride in the oversized chrome box in which we flew skyward, arriving in what seemed like seconds.  The day was hazy but the little yellow cars and ants crawling between them all that way below us were fascinating and surreal. 

Once when I was around 23 and in bed in my first Long Beach apartment, paralyzed with a broken heart,  my friend Matt showed up at my door and harassed me to my feet and we rode trains downtown to 2 WTC and up that speedy elevator and to the observation area where we could see so incredibly far.  It changed my day completely.

Every time I’d accompany my parents for Chinese food on Mott St. in Chinatown, or to visit their friends who lived on Grand St. on the Lower East Side, I’d see my dad, looking up through a child’s eyes at the Towers.  I enjoyed these moments.  These rare glimpses at my dads little boy-ness.  He was born in a bathtub on Houston St. in 1923 when the skyline looked nothing like it did today.  He’d nod his head slightly and sometimes aloud, sometimes to himself he’d say “If they fall over they’re gonna crush everything for a quarter mile in that direction”. 

In a coastal community the prime views are of the ocean.  But in Long Beach, the panorama from five stories up and facing north (away from the water) was fine by me.  From the barrier island of Jones Beach to the north, and all the antique red roofs of the Long Beach houses below, far off water towers of Nassau and Queens, to the Rockaways to the south and Manhattan Island there in the near distance.  When the sun hit the skyscraper’s windows, Manhattan could have been the Emerald City. 

On the morning of 9/11/01, before I knew about the attacks, I was already ridden in strife.  My brother had been gone for just a month, and I was headed to an elder lawyer to discuss how to handle my terminally ill mom’s and my mentally ill dad’s affairs.  Mom was at home on hospice care and dad was a psychiatric patient at L.I.J. after overdosing on my mom’s pain meds.  I was to pay them respective visits after my consultation with the lawyer.

I saw a lot of smoke from the Long Beach bridge but didn’t think too much about it.

I stopped off at my job and heard the news on the blaring radio.  Jenn said to be careful and I proceeded to Garden City to meet with the lawyer.  Denial, I suppose, but I had important work to do.

I could see the smoke rising from the window behind her chair as the lawyer nervously laid out the facts I’d come for.   We were interrupted several times by a paralegal coming in and whispering in her ear then excusing him/herself.  As with everywhere, people there had people working in the towers.  She had someone in the towers.

Cell phone service was jammed on my ride to Queens and the Grand Central Parkway and Long Island Expressway were closed.  There were police at almost every intersection.  I went the only way traffic moved all the way to Northern Boulevard and turned west and travelled a total of ¼ mile over the next three hours.  Everything stopped.  Everyone was frantic.  Chaos.  Confusion.  Dread.  I looked around for a smoker at the wheel, willing to forgo my abstinence.  I needed to get to my parents, but was going nowhere.  I finally pulled out of the deadlock into a gas station and reversed the charges to my mom and she was crying, confused and thinking that perhaps my visit that morning was there, in downtown Manhattan, in the Twin Towers.   She said “Oh, Seth…something terrible has happened.”   I told her I was OK but that there was no way to drive there and said if she needed me I’d walk to her and she said not to worry…to go to Jenn.

I made it back to Long Beach to our friend’s place where our crowd gathered and just watched and watched and watched those horrible moments on TV.  We no longer need a TV to see those images, do we….

The next day I was able to take side streets to L.I.J. and when I entered my dad’s room, he was doing what everyone was doing….watching the news, one hand halfway up, pointing.   He’d gone through so much with losing his son, his health, his mind, his city, and with the impending loss of his sweetheart.  He didn’t take his eyes from the screen as I sat on the bed next to him taking his free hand.  He gestured as he said softly,  “I always thought they’d fall over this way”.

From our apartment we could see sky where we once saw the towers.  Smoke for days, blowing first north.  Then south.  Then less.  Then gone.

Hell is personal space.  I’d been feeling those flames for a long time and the isolation associated with family suffering is acute.  9/11 on the other hand was a time when the frivolities of ego…of MY problems…got suspended and all of us got to gasp, to fear, to sob together. Everything was necessarily on hold.   For the people.  For their animals.   For the city.  For Josh.  For the incomprehensible temporary triumph of darkness. 

A thousand times I’ve seen them fall and I’m always surprised that they went straight down.

Sometimes when I meet a celebrity or a hotshot I experience this confusing mix of awe and compassion and  sameness and  frustration and pride and envy.

Going to hear Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger (Sean Lennon & Charlotte Kemp Muhl’s project) I was interested in seeing how he was and how their new materiel translated to a live situation.  I wanted to see some of my friends and meet a few more there at the sanctuary, which I think of as a second…well, third home.  I expected the music to be decent and thought that meeting Sean might be cool. 

The show was really great.  Sean’s singing and playing are smooth and sweet and the songwriting is interesting and thoughtful.  Conspicuously artful and literary and not-self indulgent in the least.  Charlotte sang beautifully with him and played accordion, melodica, banjo, guitar, bass, recorder and a load of percussion.  I'd kill for such accompaniment.  Really nice, quirky instrumentation.  Funny, cute banter.  Couldn’t have been better sound, mixed by Peter Morrison, and the scene there in the farmhouse yard was perfect.  I loved the show. 

But that’s not why I’m writing.

Leaving Woodstock and thinking back on the evening and on talking with Sean Lennon, I felt a lot.   Gratitude.  Sorrow.  Awe.  Sure....he’s “just a guy” and is just like anyone and it isn’t like he’s John Lennon or a Beatle.  He’s finding his way and struggling with thoughts and growing older just like anyone. 

But I found myself deeply affected and realized that this guy lived early through tragedy and there are no bigger shoes to fill…how could his own art ever catch an objective break?
And this John & Yoko's baby.  Ally & I were processing in the car and both feeling it though we couldn’t really get the words out.  We fought tears. 

He’s “darling, Sean”. 

He is the “Beautiful Boy” immortalized by his father,  arguably modern history’s most prolific and relevant heros.   This ordinary, tragic, smart, fortunate, happy, talented, exceptional boy is more royal than royalty. 

I have so much to write about John & the day he died & his significance to me, but this is about someone else.  I’m so glad I went to that show. 

And he’s good.



He lived at home with our aging parents and wasn’t working and was trying to finish up his long-winded philosophy degree.  A long chain of poor choices kept the fighting regular at home.  Money and privacy infringement and disappointment and alcohol and drugs....My mom was always writing him checks for unpaid parking ticket fines.  My dad always cursed him as he forked over the money my brother begged him for in order to maintain his insurance policies or pay private debt.  Shady "friends" came calling at all hours and his real friends were ending up in jail or with AIDS.  This car raised all kinds of new hell.  

It was light blue, long, low and very pretty.  It was pepperred in rust and dented and lopsided but anyone could imagine how proudly it would have rolled through town back in it’s glory day.  Especially my brother.  Driving down 73^rd Avenue he showed off by going fast and when he hit a pothole, the rusty floor under my seat/the passenger seat cracked and the weight of me and my seat bent the rusty metal beneath me and I dropped a good foot and a half and could hear and feel the road beneath me, scraping the underside of the car and sending sparks about.  The car had been charming.  Now it was junk.  Tens of thousands of dollars in debt, unemployed and not handy at all, by brother announced to my parents and me that the money for an education loan he'd be getting was going to be spent at a body shop where they'd be restoring the old car.  His vision was clear, and I'd have loved to have seen it happen.  But the cost was way too high, and led my parents to panic. We all agreed that this would ruin his life and that the selfish act would destroy the household.  Fighting over nothing would have to wait…there would be real hell to pay.   The way it was with him was that the more you tried to talk sense into him-- the more you supported him in something more advantageous--the more you tried to reason with him, the greater his resistance.  I relate.  But his stubbornness was in a league of it's own.  He was determined, and even if our logic sunk in, he couldn’t cave in now.  He would have his newly restored  ’62 Chevy.  Stay out of his way.

But in just another attempt to save him, and to protect my family, I got in his way.

Late on the night before he was expecting his check to arrive, I took the door and ignition keys I’d copied and I drove the blue ’62 Chevy Impala to a dilapidated waterside levy just outside the gates of Fort Totten in Queens.  I drove past the parked cars and parked right next to the water.  Brad and Alan met me there in Brad’s annoyingly conspicuous Trans-Am Datona 500 pace car, and we proceeded to get wasted.  We waited until the others parked there in cars had finished getting high or laid or whatever, and then there, under the Throgs Neck Bridge I poured blackberry brandy and Southern Comfort all over the seats and dashboard and set my big brother’s ’62 Chevy Impala on fire.  The flames flipped and swayed and jumped after me and I walked slowly to Brad’s hot rod and got in as he and Alan were crapping themselves and screaming at me for actually having done it.  Heading for the expressway I took one last look at the ’62 inferno I’d ignited.  The solution I’d executed.  The dream I’d set ablaze.

Ugly aftermath.  Kim vowed to cut the throat of whomever had stolen his car, should he ever find him.  He cried and cried.  My parents were upset but mixed due to the unspoken blessing at hand. 

My dad sat across from the dining room table from me a few days later and asked if I knew anything about it.  I couldn’t hold back my guilty smile.  His eyes narrowed and he said "That is NOT O.K."  But given the insanity that reigned in that family dynamic, given how out of touch with his joy and with reality my brother was, and with this expensive and dangerous undertaking just hours away, we both knew that it would be bad.  So I chose a different bad.  I know it was bad.

I’m really sorry to have caused him so much distress.  But if he could ever listen to reason, and now with so much time since that night, I think he’d understand.

Can't say I endorse or recommend spontaneous acts of destruction.  These were  extraordianry circumstances.  Or so i rationalize.

Just saying.

Thanks, Oliver….diet change coming.

I thought to lose it a few times.  Felt like I should.  Crash the car or throw the t.v. out the window or return to my the drug suit I’d worn out years earlier or have a full-fledged breakdown.  My first few minutes alone after they took her peaceful body away I did scream very loudly and throw a few things around.  Pictured the whole , crowded living room in shards. Then I realized that, as had been the case for so long, I was the one that would have to clean it up.

Then it was over.  And then it began.

I think of her laughter all the time.  she sketches thru my pencil.  She kvells over the grandsons she never met as she looks on adoringly thru my eyes.  She marvels at my survival.  she forbids me to be normal.  She musters my courage.  she points out the majesty in this ugly world & she shows up in my songs.  Wish she were here.

Eve Meltzer Branitz 6/24/25-4/24/02